SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Oct. 30: When a group of Santhalis from the Mayurbhanj district felicitated Odisha Governor-designate Raghubar Das for promoting Ol Chiki, the Santhali script, a few days back, Das, a former chief minister, was nostalgic.
“Look, the tribals from a neighboring state knew what he did for Santahlis during my tenure as chief minister and yet the Opposition painted him ‘anti-tribal’ in Jharkhand. It’s an irony,” Das, who will take oath as Odisha governor tomorrow, told this writer.
And he was right to a great extent. It was Raghubar Das who had taken steps to introduce Ol Chiki, the Santhali script, from class 1 to class 5 in all six districts of the Santhal Pargana region of the state in 2019.
He also ensured that the names of all government offices in Santhal Pargana were registered in Ol Chiki along with Hindi.
The Das government had also instructed deputy commissioners of all the districts of Santhal Pargana to appoint teachers on a contract basis to teach Ol Chiki in schools so that students from class 1 to class 5 could be taught in the same language.
Notably, Das’s appointment as the first non-tribal CM of Jharkhand was stunning after the NDA got a majority in 2014.
His compatriot and former CM Arjun Munda remained more popular than him and he was chosen to lead the NDA government. Munda was also a formidable tribal leader in the state. But Das’ rift with Munda was an open secret. So, according to political watchers, Raghubar Das went into overdrive and took several decisions to woo the tribals.
According to official records, it was during Das tenure that a project to install statues of tribal martyrs began at the old Birsa Munda jail. The jail has now been turned into a tribal museum and is scheduled to be visited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he arrives in Jharkhand on November 15.
During his tenure, the tribal sub-plan was hiked to Rs 22,260 crore in 2019-20 from Rs 11.920 crore in 2014-15.
Adivasi Gram Samiti was constituted in every tribal-dominated village with the power to spend Rs 5 lakh for development.
The Das government, for the first time, began paying Rs 3000 honorarium to village tribal heads Manki, and Rs 2000 to Munda and Parganait among others.
He gave official status to Luguburu, Hizala, and Murma fairs to preserve the tribal culture. The government also constructed a temple, a guest house, and a meditation centre at Luguburu.
Das also enacted a law to stop the religious conversion of tribals to protect their cultural identity.
To ensure the participation of primitive tribes in the maintenance of law and order in the State, the Das government constituted two police battalions of Pahadiyas. Official records say he cleared 1599 projects to fence Sarna-masna, jaher, and Masna places. He also cleared 211 projects for the construction of Munda-Manki house and Dhumkuria to protect tribal culture.
In a bid to honour Adivasi martyrs, Das launched Shahid Gram Yojana in 2017-18 to develop villages of the State’s Bravehearts who sacrificed their lives during the freedom struggle.
Das is also said to have launched several livelihood and skill development projects. His government set up 25 Kalyan Gurkuls where tribal youths were trained to become employable. He also set up a Nursing college in Chanho for tribal youths.
Das also initiated the targeting of the hardcore poor (THP) project in West Singhbhum and Santhal Pargana to bring single Adivasi women families out of the poverty pit.
What went wrong?
In 2016, Das tried to fiddle with the two laws that protect Adivasis from being dispossessed of their land, the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act and the Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act.
The amendments which did not materialise sought to lift restrictions on the sale of tribals’ land to industries so that industrial projects could be set up without much hurdle.
The creation of land banks in 2016 confounded the problem. Ostensibly, the land bank of 21 lakh acres was earmarked to encourage the growth of industries under the Momentum Jharkhand project.
The then Governor Droupadi Murmu returned the bill seeking a review of the proposed amendments forcing him to withdraw the proposed law, but the damage was done. This one decision whitewashed all his good works for tribals in Jharkhand.
The Opposition, JMM-Congress, was successful in painting him as anti-tribal and sweeping 26 out of the 28 ST reserved seats in 2019.
The Opposition was able to convince the people that their culture and resources would not be safe under the BJP.
From a labourer’s son to Raj Bhawan
Das’s climb to the gubernatorial post had been long and hard. An OBC leader, he was the son of a labourer in Jamshedpur and the family struggled to give an education to him and his six siblings. Enrolled to study law, he had his first brush with politics in his college days, starting with the student movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan against the Indira Gandhi government.
He has been part of the BJP since it was officially formed in 1980. He was first elected to the undivided Bihar Assembly in 1995, from Jamshedpur East, a constituency he won five times before losing in 2019. He was labour minister in the Babulal Marandi government and was made Urban Development Minister in 2005. He then served as Deputy CM between December 2009 and May 2010 in the Shibu Soren government. In 2014, he became the state’s first non-tribal CM. His five-year reign without any major instability was one of the first such in the state.
